James Connolly

Irish revolutionary and Marxist theorist. Born in Scotland to poor Irish parents, he worked as a child laborer in Edinburgh’s factories. Having enlisted in the King’s Liverpool Regiment at age 14, he deserted after being deployed to Ireland. However, his desertion went unnoticed due to a fortunate clerical error. He became active in labor struggles in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States, joining the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, “The Wobblies”), and engaged heavily in strikes and collective action against the British and Irish bourgeoisie. He embraced Marxist analysis, which he used to write his magnum opus “Labour in Irish History”. Connolly vigorously defended his position as a Socialist and a Catholic, and he believed that Christianity’s original message of liberation for the poor was perverted by the bourgeoisie and their clergymen. Connolly realized the importance of Irish national liberation, then a strange idea to some. He saw that Socialism in Ireland required freedom from British imperialism contrary to the views of English Socialists, some of whom accused him of “national chauvinism”, and that Irish freedom from British imperialism required Socialism contrary to the views of bourgeois Irish nationalists, some of whom accused him of “not loving Ireland enough”. He responded sharply to both camps. Connolly founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) and the Irish Citizen Army (ISA) to achieve these goals. He was among the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, in which Irish independence forces declared a provisional government (with Patrick Pearse as President and James Connolly as Vice President), and set off to fight British troops in Dublin and around Ireland. The Rising failed, and Connolly was executed alongside the other leaders. It is said that he was executed while strapped to a chair due to heavy injuries he sustained during the Rising, which prevented him from standing up.

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